How did we first meet?
By means of serendipity, or mazal.
I first met Sherman and his longtime friend Tamar Miller at a small Cambridge gathering of activists dedicated to peace and justice in Israel-Palestine. That same gathering marks the initial moment in which I publicly articulated the idea that eventually bloomed into Embodying Peace. At the gathering’s conclusion, I walked up Sherman and commented that his attire was peculiarly similar to what I had been accustomed to see as Professor Homi Bhaba’s style. He then gifted me two invitations, one to become an Oslo scholar and the other, to continue the conversation about supporting Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding at his home. That same year I travelled to Oslo and clicked into the network I would later hear described as the Trebuchet. The story blossoms until this day.
What we have done together:
We have built a cluster of student-initiated, entrepreneurial-activist initiatives that grew out of the establishment of Embodying Peace, an international Fellowship of learning, volunteering, and innovating in support of civil society peacebuilding efforts in Israel-Palestine.
Our brainchildren include Jewish Movement for Uyghur Freedom and Embodying Justice. These efforts are driven by a commitment to forge relationship-based activism which break paths for action-centered solidarity, especially in the face of intractable challenges. Our language is Constructive Solidarity.
After connecting Sherman and Jerome to Harvard’s undergraduate International Relations Council in Fall 2018, we brought the Oslo Scholars program to Harvard. In spring 2019, we hosted a College Freedom Forum which connected Harvard students and faculty to HRF’s stunning community of human rights activists and supporters.